I remember an event that iDylan won in 2011 or 2012 and it was for any hat you wanted.

Also I remember some event message that said you could get any Graal item if you won.  

Posted by Dusty

As for weight based on last join, I could... but it seems like a waste of time. It's highly unlikely players who have gotten into an event will get into another one soon. Is it possible? Ya I guess, but it's basically just RNG.

I'd honestly prefer a FIFO queue with opt-ins per event based on most recent participation. Basically what I mentioned would be a stochastic variation of a priority queue where the priority values (now - last_participation_time) would be summed and the probability of being selected would be that value divided by the sum of all participating players' priority priority values.

i.e. (now - last_participation_time) / (now * queue_length / sum_last_participation_times)  

Posted by Shadowfox

I know. And it doesn't xhange the fact that the system is still ****.

dilemmas are a lose lose situation.  

Posted by GOAT

dilemmas are a lose lose situation.

woah is that signature stefans bread factory ??  

Posted by deadowl

I'd honestly prefer a FIFO queue with opt-ins per event based on most recent participation. Basically what I mentioned would be a stochastic variation of a priority queue where the priority values (now - last_participation_time) would be summed and the probability of being selected would be that value divided by the sum of all participating players' priority priority values.

i.e. (now - last_participation_time) / (now * queue_length / sum_last_participation_times)

Right now it simply does a loop of the target amount of players(usually 60) and plucks out that way. It doesn't always get the target amount in the first loop so maybe it hits 100 iterations or so to pick 60 players out. But it's minimal. I guess hosting events doesn't happen too often so it wouldn't be that taxing, but it wasn't really something I considered when I first coded it up.

I'm not entirely sure weighted probability would make a huge difference when you're picking 60 players out of 3000.  

Posted by Dusty

As long as you click to join the queue before it closes you have an equal time to join. It doesn't matter how fast you join.


There are only a few things that filter out players, and it has nothing to do with anyone's status or progress.



As for weight based on last join, I could... but it seems like a waste of time. It's highly unlikely players who have gotten into an event will get into another one soon. Is it possible? Ya I guess, but it's basically just RNG.

Yet the system basically makes an event 50 players who are inexperienced with the game itself, why does the dev team think that this is a good idea? when clearly it isn't, you have people who NEVER get into an event, and then you get noobs with 100-800 hours who started playing a few months ago and wear a cat body or bunny slippers always in these events it's a joke.  

Posted by OG

Yet the system basically makes an event 50 players who are inexperienced with the game itself, why does the dev team think that this is a good idea? when clearly it isn't, you have people who NEVER get into an event, and then you get noobs with 100-800 hours who started playing a few months ago and wear a cat body or bunny slippers always in these events it's a joke.

THIS.  

Posted by Dusty

Right now it simply does a loop of the target amount of players(usually 60) and plucks out that way. It doesn't always get the target amount in the first loop so maybe it hits 100 iterations or so to pick 60 players out. But it's minimal. I guess hosting events doesn't happen too often so it wouldn't be that taxing, but it wasn't really something I considered when I first coded it up.

I'm not entirely sure weighted probability would make a huge difference when you're picking 60 players out of 3000.

Filters Suggested -

Boy/Girl - if it's a girl hat or a boy hat to be won. Maybe not required, but I have a few rather flowery event hats that I will most likely never wear.

Item already owned? - if a player has the hat or item that is being played for.

Player in fort? - whether or not player is in guild fort.

Player hours? - 500+ hours only in order to create healthy competition and not just 40 new players who don't know what an event is vs 10 experienced players.

Recent events entered? - the so called weighted queue. If players get into an event, give them a week long cooldown so as to prevent them from getting in again?


Another concept..

Pending Queue - placing players in a longer queue for specific games when admins host said game & player is online. Player could receive a notification saying that they have been selected to compete and if they don't respond in 30 seconds another player will be chosen.... this could be done in a physical location in game where the different admin event games are described, allowing players to participate in one queue only in order to prevent players from just spamming places in line and causing havoc.

Posted by OG

Yet the system basically makes an event 50 players who are inexperienced with the game itself, why does the dev team think that this is a good idea? when clearly it isn't, you have people who NEVER get into an event, and then you get noobs with 100-800 hours who started playing a few months ago and wear a cat body or bunny slippers always in these events it's a joke.

you can have democracy, but is that really what you want?  

Posted by Dusty

There are only a few things that filter out players, and it has nothing to do with anyone's status or progress.

Posted by OG

Yet the system basically makes an event 50 players who are inexperienced with the game itself, why does the dev team think that this is a good idea? when clearly it isn't, you have people who NEVER get into an event, and then you get noobs with 100-800 hours who started playing a few months ago and wear a cat body or bunny slippers always in these events it's a joke.

There should be a light bulb above your head about now.

Posted by 4-Lom

Another concept..

Pending Queue - placing players in a longer queue for specific games when admins host said game & player is online. Player could receive a notification saying that they have been selected to compete and if they don't respond in 30 seconds another player will be chosen.... this could be done in a physical location in game where the different admin event games are described, allowing players to participate in one queue only in order to prevent players from just spamming places in line and causing havoc.

I don't think there's any system that would improve the event problem in a big way. The only real way this can be fixed is by increasing the amount of events being held daily. Events team?  

Posted by OG

Yet the system basically makes an event 50 players who are inexperienced with the game itself, why does the dev team think that this is a good idea? when clearly it isn't, you have people who NEVER get into an event, and then you get noobs with 100-800 hours who started playing a few months ago and wear a cat body or bunny slippers always in these events it's a joke.

Posted by Shadowfox

THIS.

Why shouldn't they get into the events? Are they not allowed to enjoy them? This is the problem I have... it's always the same people bitching that they never get into events anymore because they always did before. What makes you more privileged to experience an event over the other players? Because you have more hours?

Posted by 4-Lom

Boy/Girl - if it's a girl hat or a boy hat to be won. Maybe not required, but I have a few rather flowery event hats that I will most likely never wear.

I was interested in allowing staff to host events with other prerequisites like that but I don't think I'd have the time to do it.

Posted by 4-Lom

Item already owned? - if a player has the hat or item that is being played for.

Players who already own the prize are already omitted.

Posted by 4-Lom

Player in fort? - whether or not player is in guild fort.

Players in forts and spars and the such are skipped over.

Posted by 4-Lom

Player hours? - 500+ hours only in order to create healthy competition and not just 40 new players who don't know what an event is vs 10 experienced players.

I feel like it'd be more fair to have events hosted towards specific groups of players, rather than just ignoring a huge chunk of the playerbase. But see my first response. 500 hours is a lot of time to invest in a game, and it's not fair that you'd have to basically just AFK like everyone else to get a chance in events.

Anyways, players on tutorial island and some number of hours are skipped over anyways.

Posted by 4-Lom

Recent events entered? - the so called weighted queue. If players get into an event, give them a week long cooldown so as to prevent them from getting in again?

Possible, but I highly doubt this will have a noticeable outcome. The chances of getting into an event and then in another in the same week is pretty slim.  

I've won an event on my noob account literally fresh out of Balamb (so about 5 min online time). It was hide and seek.  

It's gonna be hard to implement this system but.
We can add an icon on the menu called Events. We can press an option, play for an item, play for fun. If you are playing for fun, you don't get anything.
An admin is going to global PM that events are going to be hosted.
In the Menu, Event queue gets opened up for players to queue.
First 50 gets in, next 500 have to wait for their turn.
if u disconnect, log off, you will automatically be removed from the queue list.
GG forget about events. It's all about dedication, if ur connection is horrible deal with it.  

Posted by Dusty

Why shouldn't they get into the events? Are they not allowed to enjoy them? This is the problem I have... it's always the same people bitching that they never get into events anymore because they always did before. What makes you more privileged to experience an event over the other players? Because you have more hours?


I was interested in allowing staff to host events with other prerequisites like that but I don't think I'd have the time to do it.


Players who already own the prize are already omitted.


Players in forts and spars and the such are skipped over.


I feel like it'd be more fair to have events hosted towards specific groups of players, rather than just ignoring a huge chunk of the playerbase. But see my first response. 500 hours is a lot of time to invest in a game, and it's not fair that you'd have to basically just AFK like everyone else to get a chance in events.

Anyways, players on tutorial island and some number of hours are skipped over anyways.


Possible, but I highly doubt this will have a noticeable outcome. The chances of getting into an event and then in another in the same week is pretty slim.

But they are the same people constantly getting into these events, not to mention the hosts are terrible.  

Posted by 4-Lom

Filters Suggested -

Boy/Girl - if it's a girl hat or a boy hat to be won. Maybe not required, but I have a few rather flowery event hats that I will most likely never wear.

Item already owned? - if a player has the hat or item that is being played for.

I don't care if I get a "girl" hat or a "boy" hat. Some people probably do, but I don't think this should be an excluding factor. I'm pretty sure Multipas* would agree. Item already owned? Apparently that may be filtered. I don't think events should preclude any past winners from my own perspective, but not everyone holds that opinion.

Player in fort? - whether or not player is in guild fort.

This would make some sense if it wasn't the individual player requesting participation, apparently spars and forts are already considered according to Dusty.

Player hours? - 500+ hours only in order to create healthy competition and not just 40 new players who don't know what an event is vs 10 experienced players.

I don't have 500 hours on iGraal. Thanks.

Recent events entered? - the so called weighted queue. If players get into an event, give them a week long cooldown so as to prevent them from getting in again?

This would be a variation of the stochastic-style priority queue I proposed which applies a maximum value for priority.

Another concept..

Pending Queue - placing players in a longer queue for specific games when admins host said game & player is online. Player could receive a notification saying that they have been selected to compete and if they don't respond in 30 seconds another player will be chosen.... this could be done in a physical location in game where the different admin event games are described, allowing players to participate in one queue only in order to prevent players from just spamming places in line and causing havoc.

This removes the stochasticism with a straight up FIFO opt-in queue for each class of event, so essentially another variation of what I proposed, but would take longer to populate events with each potential participant opting-in. The only novel idea in this suggestion is to split up each class of event into separate queues.

I'm guessing opt-in priority queue based on last participation is in agreement with the people of this forum, with stochastic properties and event-specific queues being in debate. The stochastic factor could be implemented alongside a non-stochastic solution. Anything that sets up queues for each class of event would probably take a lot more work.

Crap Dusty, I just realized you mentioned loops, which is completely unnecessary (you need at most one pass). Of course it has been a long time since I've worked with probability theory, so telling you how to avoid that isn't on the tip of my tongue. A solution on StackOverflow would be queue[floor(random * queue.length)] where random is a random number between 0 and 1, which appears to cover that situation.  

Posted by Bryan*

I've won an event on my noob account literally fresh out of Balamb (so about 5 min online time). It was hide and seek.

Hide and seek isn't hosted by the event queue system.

Posted by OG

But they are the same people constantly getting into these events

Proof?